


about today

by tree_tops



Category: TWICE (Band)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:47:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22464358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tree_tops/pseuds/tree_tops
Summary: "you know, i think they'll write stories about us."
Relationships: Im Nayeon/Yoo Jeongyeon
Comments: 2
Kudos: 51





	about today

"you know, i think they'll write stories about us," nayeon tells her, cheek pressed into the thin material of the picnic mat. the grass in front of them is stretching on forever, disappearing into the dark before coming to life again where the glow of the streetlamps meet the pavement.  
  
jeongyeon snorts. nayeon wishes she would indulge her just once, take her hand and lean her forehead against nayeon's, but maybe this is what keeps her heart beating, after all. jeongyeon, turning on her side to look at her. the bright amusement that fades, slowly and surely, into endearment.  
  
"what kind of stories?" jeongyeon asks, finally, and she's looking at nayeon, now, eyes soft under the moonlight. all the rough edges gone.  
  
"why can't you look at me like that all the time?" nayeon asks, instead, and jeongyeon smiles. pulls her hand out from where it's wedged under her side, and reaches out for nayeon's. they can do this blind now, nayeon thinks, as jeongyeon slots her fingers between her own.  
  
"that wouldn't make for a good story," jeongyeon says, a smile in her voice.  
  
"then fuck good stories," nayeon says, angling for a poor imitation of a pirate, and jeongyeon laughs. her hand shifts to the plane of nayeon's cheek, and it's warm. autumn is passing - it'd taken its time to go, then heaved its cold breath through the city all at once. jeongyeon is still holding nayeon's hand. she squeezes, once.  
  
"thank you," jeongyeon says, and her voice is heavy with something. light. the tinny taste of soda. possibility.  
  
"for fucking good stories?" nayeon asks, anyway, because it'll make jeongyeon laugh. and she does, too, but all nayeon can see is the crinkles at the corner of her eyes. the way her lips turn down, somehow, at the ends.  
  
"that's exactly what nayeon of troy, the face that launched a thousand ships, would say," jeongyeon says, seriously, and nayeon can imagine jeongyeon's round glasses, the awkward set of her coat on her gangly shoulders, the first day nayeon went with her to the college for moral support. she wears form fitting clothes now, courtesy of mina's present-buying habits on holidays. then jeongyeon's thumb brushes soft against nayeon's cheek, and nayeon closes her eyes. doesn't shudder. it's funny, that jeongyeon still has this effect on her. like her body doesn't know how to stop - craving this, whatever jeongyeon is willing to give her.  
  
"that's exactly what troy, with the achilles heel, holding up the heavens, would say," nayeon decides, finally, when jeongyeon's face has started to turn worried, and nayeon watches the furrow disappear. the way jeongyeon doesn't laugh, like she thought she would. just cocks her head as she scoots closer, scrunching up the picnic blanket with her knees.  
  
"so you _do_ pay attention when i'm running through my lesson plans," jeongyeon says, softly, and nayeon thinks she would do anything. to keep the stars in jeongyeon's eyes. hold up the heavens, if she had to, with her small shoulders. all she'd need is jeongyeon's hands around her waist, and jeongyeon's mouth on her neck, and jeongyeon's voice, singing her a song.  
  
_what else would i want to do more than that?_ nayeon thinks. what else can she do but sit and listen as jeongyeon speaks, voice sure and steady, in the dying light on the veranda, breathing air into nayeon's lungs? but they have never had to do this - jeongyeon has always been content to sit happily in the loud, unspoken truth of nayeon's devotion, and nayeon can make her snide jokes. her petty remarks. and jeongyeon can tear her a new one in return.  
  
(it gives them character, nayeon told her, one night, with jeongyeon's nose pressed into the crook of her neck.  
  
"i think you should put that in our wedding vows," jeongyeon said, laughing, her voice heavy with sleep, and nayeon had been struck dumb by the weight of it. "or whatever the fuck we're allowed to do. our pledging ourselves to each other vows," jeongyeon corrected, and nayeon was still grappling with the monster in her chest that was screaming _yes, yes, yes,_ like a tape recorder stuttering around. "i'll make it on powerpoint."  
  
"shut up," nayeon said. her hands shook. "stop acting like you haven't just proposed to me."  
  
jeongyeon yawned. "pay attention. i said 'pledging ourselves to each other vows'," jeongyeon pointed out, but she was laughing, the feeling of it reverbrating into nayeon's chest. her fingers tangled with nayeon's loosely, under the warmth of the duvet.  
  
"yes," nayeon said, instead of arguing, her voice muffling in jeongyeon's hair. "yes, i will."  
  
"okay," jeongyeon said. and nayeon couldn't help but laugh, at the way her voice trembled - so it made two of them. jeongyeon's smile, familiar and real, curved up against her skin.

"good.")  
  
so instead, nayeon screws her mouth up into that face she knows jeongyeon hates. says: "i even write stories about us, to support your astounding literature career." jeongyeon makes a show of rolling her eyes, but her gaze falls back easily on nayeon's visage, drawn by an invisible string. her thumb draws circles on the back of nayeon's hand.  
  
"what about?"  
  
"nothing at all," nayeon says. she's rolled back onto her back, but jeongyeon is still staring at her, cheek pressed to her palm. elbow dug into the grass underneath them.  
  
"they must be about something," jeongyeon presses, because she's always wanted to know, even if she tries to pretend otherwise. because she has, against all of her better judgment, wanted to know her, for all her absurdities. for all her terrible, horrible faults, nayeon thinks, believes, wonders. her mouth is dry when she speaks - whether it is from holding her breath, or from the beer they'd gulped down, the empty cans strewn at their feet.

" _What if you are alive when I die_? nayeon remembers reading it, once, when jeongyeon had fallen asleep with a poetry anthology on her face. she'd peeled it off her slowly, sliding the glasses off her face, and left her to sleep, there, blanket tucked under her chin, lying askew in their armchair.

right now, sprawled on the grass in this park, nayeon slings a helpless arm across her face. she can feel it getting hot, as it always does when they're here. she doesn't like being honest. but she likes it, somehow, with jeongyeon.  
  
" _What if I am alive when you die?_ "  
  
nayeon holds her breath. jeongyeon is staring at her so softly, so slowly. something wondrous. something good, nayeon thinks. and it's all hers to keep.  
  
"did you read the next page?" jeongyeon asks, finally. she's trailing a hand up nayeon's bare arm.  
  
nayeon shakes her head. "was i meant to?"

" _Like snow flakes I long to come to you_." it doesn't sound like the voice she uses, when she's reading poetry out, again and again, pacing around their living room. it sounds like the first time she told nayeon she loved her, under the dim glow of nayeon's half-broken light in nayeon's dingy apartment, jeongyeon's hand trembling against her cheek. " _I long to snow for a thousand years_."

this is what nayeon has. this is what nayeon keeps, behind her ribs. _here_ , nayeon thinks, pulling jeongyeon's hand to the flat of her sternum. here is where you are. and jeongyeon's hand gaze is always warm, her breath ghosting across nayeon's cheek as she pulls her closer.

her hand is steady, always steady, against the bare drumbeat of nayeon's heart.

**Author's Note:**

> [nayeon's poem](https://jaypsong.blog/2012/11/30/this-azure-day-by-seo-jung-ju/) / [jeongyeon's poem](https://jaypsong.blog/2012/02/04/a-winter-love-by-moon-jung-hee/)


End file.
